Groundstation

The Compass-2 ground station, call sign DL0FHA, is our terrestrial radio station designed for extra planetary telecommunication with our satellite and is a constituting part of the ground segment of our satellite system. It has also the ability to communicate with other satellites and space craft in numerous digital modes but also per voice. Past missions that have been controlled by our ground station are the Compass-1 mission and the Wren mission.

We have also made several contacts with satellites like Funcube-1, Eagle-2, several AAusat satellites, C-stars, ZACUBE-1, Humsat-D and the international space station and many more.

In the Compass-2 mission, our ground station primarily receives telemetry data from our satellite ON04DL, which will be orbiting in a sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 630km and is therefore also a tracking station.

DL0FHA is hosted by the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences (WGS84 coordinates: Latitude: 50.76476880; Longitude: 6.047933220) for the reception and transmission of radio signals in the 70cm ultra high frequency band (UHF) and the 2m very high frequency band (VHF). It has also an additional telecommunication port which is located at the Institute of High Frequency Technology (IHF) of the RWTH Aachen for the reception of S-Band signals using a rotor controlled parabolic dish antenna.

Also the Compass-2 mission specific high resolution data decoder/encoder with turbo-code ability is located at the IHF and receives / transmits the data per audio stream via tcp/ip to the DL0FHA ground station and future partner ground stations.

A general overview of the ground segment is described in Figure 1 using a block diagram. In this diagram also the locations for (de-)modulation, (de-)packetizing, (de-)framing and the data format, like audio, AX.25 frame, content data is indicated.